Punta Mita - Day 2: Games & Turtles!

The one thing I really appreciate about vacations these days -- the sleep. I somehow never manage to crack even 7 hours of sleep at home, but on vacation, I routinely make it to 8 hours. I can't tell if that's because there's less distractions, or just the psychology of being on vacation, but it's so refreshing.  

Today the only item on our agenda wasn't until 6:30PM, so after a very late breakfast (buffet gets decent marks, not as amazing as some of the other places we've stayed in Mexico, but had a fresh fruit smoothie bar, a quesadilla station, and very soft breads and pastries), we explored the hotel game room. Surprisingly well-laid out -- Ian and I played a couple games of shuffleboard and pool while the twins explored the video game corner - there was some racing game and some fashion runway game that appeared to be very enthralling. 

And then it was back to the pool! Today we decided to give the water slide in the kids pool a whirl. Not exactly water park level, but impressive for a hotel pool. Ian and I both went down it several more times than we expected to. The twins also declared this pool the fanciest one we've been to because of the family infinity pool. I guess normally those are reserved for the adult pools? Or (more likely), we normally pack our vacations with so many activities that we don't actually hang out at the pool much.

One thing we noticed today, the resort seems to have a few resident hawks that it deploys every morning to keep the seagulls away from the property. It was pretty neat watching them get so close to us while they were doing their rounds up in the sky. This is the second time I've heard of a resort having hawks around to keep other scavenger-type birds away from guests...seems like a trend...hopefully an eco-friendly one? 

Ian would like to give the Conrad high marks for their pool margherita pizza -- it appeared to be done in a real stone oven and had fresh basil and juicy tomatoes. Okay, so it's not exactly authentic Mexican cuisine...but the twins concurred that it hit the spot after exerting all those calories lying around on lounge chairs. 

The real highlight of the day though was our evening private turtle release! I could list a bunch of facts here about how the turtles all return to the place where they are released to lay eggs, or about how the survival rate of turtles is so small so conservation efforts are critical to this endangered species' survival, but honestly Google would probably do a better job of that than I would. Instead, I'll just note that it was really cool. The turtles were so tiny! And there is something really...fulfilling? peaceful? magical?...about watching these day-old turtles slowly figure out where the ocean was and make their way towards it. And watching the waves come and swallow them up and take them out into the sea. 

Stay alive turtles!